Film composer won three Oscars

Tuesday

Mar 31, 2009 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2009 at 3:04 PM

Composer Maurice Jarre, who captured the majesty of the desert in his music for Lawrence of Arabia and wrote the haunting Lara's Theme in his score for Doctor Zhivago, died Sunday at his home in California. He was 84.

Composer Maurice Jarre, who captured the majesty of the desert in his music for Lawrence of Arabia and wrote the haunting Lara's Theme in his score for Doctor Zhivago, died Sunday at his home in California. He was 84.

"The world of film music is mourning one of its last great figures," said Bernard Miyet, leader of the French musicians guild SACEM.

Born in 1924 in Lyon, France, Jarre studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris. He composed scores for theatrical productions before working 12 years as permanent composer at the Theatre National Populaire.

He soon branched into composing soundtracks for movies, and in 1961 worked on director David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, for which he won his first Oscar.

He won a second for his work on Doctor Zhivago, another film by Lean.

Jarre collaborated with Lean again in 1984 on A Passage to India, winning a third Oscar.

In February, he received a lifetime-achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Jarre's musical style was noted for its use of ethnic instruments.

Helen Levitt

The photographer, whose scenes of New York street life provide a window into a vanished era, died Sunday in New York. She was 95.

Levitt was best-known for street scenes of children in the 1930s and 1940s.

She was drawn to neighborhoods such as Spanish Harlem and the Lower East Side where, in a time before television, people treated the streets as their living room.

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